


Civilised Nature

by Tawabids



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Bonding, Fictional terrorist acts, Genosha, Love at first scent, M/M, Political plots, Threats of non-con, domestic abuse, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 19:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genosha fights for its independence. Sebastian Shaw rules the burgeoning nation in all but name. Erik is an alpha politician second and a servant of the people first. And then he sees Charles, omega to the ruthless Shaw, and all his priorities change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Civilised Nature

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [this prompt on the X-Men First Kink meme](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/3278.html?thread=4512974#t4512974).

Erik makes his first mistake that November. There are fresh flakes of snow coming and going between shards of blue sky, falling on the old slush, a multitude of organic colours, absorbing the life of the city that carries on over it regardless. Despite the weather and all the local schools being shut, the council's weekly meeting goes ahead, and for the first time Erik receives an invitation in his pigeonhole. A simple note, typed and folded once. 

The push for the independence of Genosha is in another strong swing at that time. The senate is loaded with liberals and sympathisers - or as loaded as it will ever get. Mutant rights are popular this year, and plenty of other politicians wouldn't mind using Genosha as a distraction from their own personal crusades. Erik knows this is it, this is when he needs to get in on the action. If that means sitting in on meetings with that slimy, sting-witted son-of-a-human Shaw, he'll do it. 

The meeting goes on and on, various conversational circles orbiting each other at once. Someone's omega - in only a thin singlet and tailored shorts, though it's freezing in this big glass room in the corner of the building - brings hot drinks and takes morning tea orders. Erik is too nervous to eat, too absorbed in watching the men and woman at the table wrestle with his people's fate, and dismisses the omega with a wave. To his surprise, the omega leans in to catch his eye and with a smile whispers, "First time?"

Erik's glance flicks up to him. Blue eyes. Brown curls, left a little long around his ears. The omega raises his eyebrows, eyes tightening with his smile, "I'll bring you something nice. You'll think better, trust me," and is moving on to the elderly woman with the power to control liquid sitting just up the table from Erik. 

He doesn't think twice about the encounter, even when a fresh cucumber and marmite sandwich on a white plate slides in front of him mid-morning, when everyone else is being presented with the pastas and quiche lorraines they ordered to delicate diet specifications. He looks at it dubiously, having never in his life been less than disgusted by the smell of marmite, but the salt against the vegetable as crisp as ice makes him instantly realise how hungry he is. His mind feels clearer as the conversation resumes on the fence sitters who could sway the vote. 

When Erik leaves the room to relieve himself, he finds the same omega sitting outside the meeting room, hunched over his knees. He looks lost in thought, arms folded loosely; when Erik breathes out and sees white condensation forming in the air, he rolls his eyes. "Who do you belong to?"

The omega looks up. "Sebastian," he answers quickly.

"Mr Shaw needs to keep better track of the weather," Erik says, pulling off his business jacket and draping it around the man's shoulders. He himself is too pumped with the adrenaline of the meeting to feel the cold. "You're fucking covered in goose pimples." 

Behind him, the door to the board meeting opens and Mr Quested – though he goes by his mutant name these days, Riptide – calls, "Lehnsherr, you did the report on the Maine constituency, right? We need some clarification-” he takes in the scene and looks over his shoulder.

At the far end of the room, framed by the open door, Shaw stands up at the head of the table. Silence falls across the mutants one by one as he strides past them, and Riptide presses himself back against the wood. It all happens so quickly that Erik is still wondering what has happened to make them go quiet when Shaw backhands him, putting his ability behind it. Erik is thrown onto the thick hallway carpet and lies stunned for a moment, then slowly props himself onto his elbow, touching his open mouth gingerly as he tries to find which part of his face is dripping bright splatters of blood onto the white threads.

He looks up to find Shaw crouched over him, touching his shoulder with a fatherly hand. "Erik, dear," he says kindly, "I know you're new, but you don't touch my property. You understand?"

Erik nods, his lip and cheek feeling too swollen to form an apology. Shaw's omega is crouched by his alpha, fingers brushing Shaw’s ironed shoulders, saying something quiet like _it’s fine, Mr Lehnsherr was just helping, Sebastian, keep your mind on the vote_. They both stand up in perfect sync, and Shaw’s mouth twists suddenly into an ugly line.

“Take this off, you look fucking ridiculous,” he snaps. One of the sleeves rips as he snatches the jacket and hurls it in a ball in Erik’s general direction. He doesn’t look at either of them as he storms back into the meeting room. 

Riptide hurries over and helps Erik to his feet, putting his jacket in his hands. Erik glances between the omega and Shaw, sliding back into his padded chair at the head of the table. “Are you…?”

“It’s fine,” the omega says, stepping back as he waves Erik off.

Later, he is around the bar at the hotel where many of the council have taken up residence so they don’t have to make the treacherous drive through the snow back to their suburban homes and suburban families. Emma has bought him a long-island iced tea to celebrate what she calls ‘His first and hopefully last encountered with Shaw’s famed obsession with his material possessions’. 

“You’re a cynic and a bigot,” he tells her, pressing the cold glass against his bruised cheek, which is coming up in a dense multitude of purples and greens. 

Emma leans in and whispers conspiratorially, “It’s why I always win.”

Erik laughs, but his gut isn’t really into it. He feels like today might be the least funny day he’s ever had.

His first mistake isn’t offering his jacket to Shaw’s omega. The mistake is not forgetting those blue eyes immediately. 

\---

The vote passes by a whisker. After two decades as the exception sovereign, Genosha has the right to its own constitution and government. It remains subject to federal law, but by the parties and celebrations stretching late into the night every day of that week, anyone would think that total independence was right around the corner.

Erik doesn’t care for parties and appreciates the celebration better when he sees it on the street outside his window. The everyday mutants running mutant businesses and making mutant families, they are the ones who truly benefit, who will no longer see federal officers searching their homes, raiding Genosha school registries for powerful new children and forcing city councils to spend the majority of their budgets on mutant control methods. That’s what Erik has been fighting for.

But Emma wants a new date on her arm every night – as an intensely sought-after omega, she doesn’t want to give the slightest impression that she is paying attention to any particular alpha – and she cajoles him into coming out with her on Wednesday to a fundraising gala for Shaw’s next campaign. All the biggest names will be there. 

“And you need to get among them, my Grinch,” she pouts in the car on the way there, trying to cover his bruise with the makeup from her bag. “You need to woo them, put your face in their memory, suck them off in the bathroom if that’s what it takes. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if you’re an idealist after all.”

The night is just as dull and painful as he expects. But when he first glimpses Shaw’s omega through the crowd, he is suddenly glad to be there. The man is in a suit that oozes money and tailored stitching, that hangs in just such a way to draw attention to his figure and the broad squareness of his shoulders. Erik has to consciously force himself to look away. He tells himself not to be such an idiot, but he circles Shaw anyway, hopping from conversation to conversation in an attempt to get closer. Just to look Shaw in the eye, just to show him he wasn’t threatened by Shaw’s little pissing contest at the meeting last week.

Before he gets the chance, Shaw and a few of the biggest arse-kissing bastards are trotting off to a smaller lounge at the back. Erik thinks of Emma telling him to suck dick if he has to and decides to follow as if he’s one of the boys. Why not establish himself as a go-getter? Everyone knows that you have to be pushy to get anywhere in this game. 

He tells himself it does not have anything to do with blue eyes and a perfect suit.

\---

In the back lounge, he floats in at the rear of the group and settles himself on one of the periphery couches, introducing himself to the red-skinned mutant next to him. The conversation is casual, mostly between groups of old friends – if these two-faced politicians and lobbyists can be said to have friends – and Erik ends up talking law with the red-skinned Mr Azazel and an elderly mutant whose racial terminology hasn’t been updated since the nineteenth century. His omega, a pretty black woman in a twilight-blue cocktail dress, sits at his elbow. She occasionally tsks the worst of her alpha’s language, scolding him gently, and he replies with a twinkling smile, “Oh yes, my dear, you’re quite right. Thank you for catching that.”

Erik keeps his eye on Shaw’s group and his ears on the conversation right in front of him, sipping a gin and tonic. At one point, his attention is drawn to Shaw’s laughter, quickly joined by the others around him. 

Erik glances over. He feels as if someone has just dumped his drink, ice cubes and all, down the back of his neck. Shaw is gripping his omega by his hair and has a snide grin on his face as he speaks to him. Erik can just make out the words.

“You’re so insipid, it’s agonising,” Shaw barks. “God, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, huh? Did you hear what he goes on about,” he glances around the circle of cronies, “racial divides and social disparity. When we are trying to fucking _enjoy ourselves,_ ” and without warning he shoves his omega’s head down into the lap of the nearest crony, who gives a shocked squeal and spills his drink down the back of the orange leather sofa.

Erik clenches his fist around the gin and tonic. He can feel the copper railing around the bar and the iron-rod foundations under floor and the steel in Shaw’s cufflinks. Mr Azazel and the elderly man’s omega are looking over too now; most of the lounge is, in fact, though a lot of them are pretending they’re not. 

Shaw gives another bark of laughter as he grinds his omega’s face into the stranger’s crotch, and is joined by the cowardly titter of his supporters. The omega in the blue cocktail dresses flinches next to Erik and puts her hand to her mouth. At last, just when Erik thinks he cannot watch another second, he has to do something, Shaw drags his omega up again, still by the hair. Every inch of the man’s face is flushed and when Shaw finally lets go he pushes his fringe back into place with a quick sweep of his hand. As if he’d embarrassed _himself_ , by tripping over drunk or something. 

Shaw strokes the rim of his omega’s ear, tender now, but still speaking loud enough for most of the lounge to hear now that all but the most forced conversations have died down. “If we really needed a bit of entertainment, I could suggest they all form a queue and fuck you over that table there,” he waves his nearly-empty martini at the room, raising his voice until no one is pretending not to listen. “Well, go on? Who’s keen? He’s really not that good a lay, but I want to be a good host.”

“Sebastian,” the omega says. His voice is firm and carries clearly around the room despite being much quieter than Shaw’s. “You’re drunk. For God’s sake.”

“Not drunk enough to get through the rest of this fucking fundraiser,” Shaw drains the last of the martini and shoves the glass towards his omega. “Get me another one, there’s a good chap.”

\---

The next few months are the busiest of Erik’s career to date, and he has little time to spare between the moment his alarm goes off – conferences and gym sessions and official dinners and paperwork and PR fixes and interviews and briefings and on and on – to the moment his head hits the pillow at night. Little time to think about the blue-eyed omega, let alone attend to his own private life. Emma uses this as an excuse to pull him out as her escort whenever she can.

“Everyone knows you’re too emotionally stunted to take an omega, sweetheart,” she tells him. “They’re all waiting for you to have a breakdown, fall into the arms of some precious European girl and run away to Iceland.”

“Do they really think that? I enjoy my work. I enjoy being a single alpha,” Erik says heatedly.

“I’ve been trying to dissuade them,” Emma says, not meeting his eyes. Erik doubts her, but she’s fun company if you don’t let yourself take anything she says at face value. He does admit that he looks forward to seeing her number pop up on his phone and her honeyed voice sing-songing, “My driver’s picking you up at eight, I’ll be in teal, wear something to match.”

That July comes the bomb at the Genosha government headquarters. Erik is downtown getting a coffee between meetings when he hears the sirens and sees the smoke on the horizon.

He drops his venti Americano on the pavement and sprints, his tie fluttering over his shoulder and his new leather brogues already starting to blister, to reach the scene of the explosion. The emergency crew are holding people back, but Erik flashes his Genosha ID.

“I’m metal manipulation,” he yells at the nearest fire fighter – a grey-skinned temperature sink, her palour clashing horribly with her yellow uniform, “I can help,” he holds the card aloft. “I’m emergency trained.”

They let him through, and he spends four hours pulling apart the wreckage millimetre by millimetre, trying to sense patches of warm metal in the debris that are around 37 degrees Celsius, or the vibrations of those crying out for help too deep for rescuers to hear them.

\---

In the end there are four deaths, but only one of them a major figure in Genosha politics. Anti-mutant extremists take responsibility, and of course there is an outpouring of sympathy from the rest of the globe. But Erik can hear the disdain in the reporters’ voices, that _just figures_ tone that says, “Mutants – they’re always getting into trouble like that.”

Erik’s image is caught by a photographer, in his suit and dust-smeared face bent to lift a two-tonne beam off a pair of bloodied interns who survived with only a broken arm between them. Shaw gets the major Genoshan newspapers to run his picture on every front page for almost a week, accompanied by carefully constructed headlines to boost the state’s morale – MUTANT HEROES AMONG US and RISING POLITICIAN TURNS SAVIOUR IN THE RUBBLE are two that seem particularly blind to the scores of emergency crew and bystanders who weren’t lucky enough to get their pictures snapped. By the end of the week, Erik has given at least three interviews a day on top of his regular schedule and slept less than four hours every night. Even Emma, initially gushing with pride at his newfound celebrity status, soon backs off with the party invitations and gives him the space he needs.

When he falls asleep during a publicity meeting on the sixth day after the bombing, Shaw takes him aside and squeezes his arm. Erik tenses up. He is acutely aware that Shaw absorbs electricity from the mains in his downtime, and can probably snap Erik’s arm right off at the elbow if he so wished. 

“I want you to take some personal time, just a couple of days or so,” Shaw says softly. “You’ve earned it, and more importantly, I think you need it. I’ll call a driver to take you to my lake house this afternoon. Don’t worry about packing, my people will sort everything out.”

He wonders if this has anything to do with what Erik said yesterday to the press about how the Genoshan government has relied too heavily on the populace’s natural mutant abilities to protect them against external threats. He decides it is, after conversing briefly with Emma by phone as he frantically rearranges his schedule and transfers all the paperwork and to-be-read folders from his desk into his bag. He has not been following the official line Shaw wants fed to the press. He should have realised that as long as he is MUTANT HERO and RISING POLITICIAN TURNS SAVIOUR, his opinion will be a threat to Shaw.

But he is also so sleep-deprived, and so weary of recounting the events of the bombing to microphones and scrambling reporters, that he goes without protest.

“By the way,” Shaw says, somehow finding a gap between meeting the head of security and signing the budget on a lease for new government buildings until the originals can be repaired. “Charles will be there too.”

“Who’s Charles?” Erik asks, laden down with a briefcase, armful of folders and spare jacket and scarf. 

“You know Charles – my omega,” Shaw raises an eyebrow as Erik’s head jerks up and the top few folders slide to the ground. “Stupid prat threw me out of the way when the bomb detonated. Seems to have forgotten my abilities could absorb the blast. Anyway, I couldn’t have him limping around after me with all the press – makes me look weak, if they start going on about it – so I’ve sent him away until he’s more presentable. I’m sure you’ll find him good company,” he opens the door and is instantly swarmed by bodyguards and assistants. “Oh, and Lehnsherr,” he says, standing on the threshold. Erik holds his gaze as a sharp smile spreads across Shaw’s face, “don’t touch him. If you do, I won’t just kill your career, if you know what I mean,” still beaming, he gives a quick salute and heads out into the throng.

\---

The lake house is more of a lake-mansion, but it is mostly shut up for the season because Shaw has no time for leisure this summer. Apart from a caretaker and a few come-and-go gardeners, there is only the one occupant besides Erik. 

He is greeted at the door by Shaw’s omega – by Charles. When the heavy, frosted glass swings open, Erik’s voice catches in his throat. The man is leaning on two crutches, one leg of his slacks rolled up to make way for a cast that covers his leg from ankle to knee. He is in a bright cobalt sweater over a paler blue shirt, setting off the intensity of his eyes until they’re almost glowing. There are scratches on his face and a bandaged wrist peeking out of one sleeve, but he smiles as if he’s never been better.

“Mr Lehnsherr. Please, come in,” he takes a couple of tripod steps back and then sweeps his arm across the sight of a cavernous, marbled hall. “Was the drive pleasant?”

Erik has had so many questions in the last week, so many striking, cutting, slashing questions, that the sound of that simple pleasantry in the omega’s soft accent is like cool water on a burn. He gives a one-word answer as he steps into the hall, gaping up at the refurbished glass-and-steel architecture that dominates the east wing of the house. In the dusk outside, the first stars are glinting on the small lake and Erik can see the warm glow of other holiday homes on the far side of the water.

“There’s a late dinner on the table, but let me show you your room,” Charles nudges the door shut with the tip of his crutch. “You’ll have to carry your own bags, I’m afraid,” his eyes crinkle up as he smiles. 

Erik doesn’t move, captivated by the sight of two tiny figures sitting out on the deck of their three-story monstrosity directly across the lake from where he stands. He can’t make out anything about them except the pale shape of a woman’s dress, and he wonders if they’re an alpha and an omega, if they’re brain surgeons or top-tier entrepreneurs, if they’re drinking wine or just enjoying the sight of insects over the water. It is so peaceful here. He had forgotten what silence was.

“Mr Lehnsherr?” Charles’ hand brushes his elbow, and Erik starts. He moves away a step, already ashamed at that cowardice.

“Listen, I know this is awkward, but Shaw mentioned…”

The corner of Charles’ mouth quirks. “Let me guess. Not to touch me or he’ll cut your testicles off and throw them in the ghoulash at his next charity dinner?”

Erik ducks his head. “Something like that.”

Charles leans forward so that Erik cannot avoid his eye and winks very deliberately, “Well, Mr Lehnsherr, his drama may be intimidating, but I rarely take Sebastian’s words to heart.”

\---

Two days. 

That’s all it takes. Two days. Erik is in love. _Mein Gott_ , love is such a plain and unspecific word. Every iron fibre of Erik’s existence as an alpha stands up and points towards the magnetic north of Charles’ omega. He limps into the room and Erik feels like a sloppy teenager fumbling his way through the waltz at his first school dance. They eat dinner together and Erik cannot take his eyes off the way Charles’ mouth moves when he speaks. He is trying to work, tries to field calls from the office and keep things running long-distance, tries to catch up on legal reports and proposals for rapidly evolving Genoshan law. And then he looks out the window and spots Charles reading on the bench at the edge of the lake, and his mind blanks everything else out and says, _what the heck, you should go swimming. Now._

So he wanders down in swim trunks with a towel over his shoulder and dives into the lake right in front of Charles, does a quick lap to the raft and back, climbs out of the water and then stands in front of the omega, dripping and posing, asking him how his book is going. 

It’s going well, apparently.

Two days. 

Charles, it turns out, is a professor of genetics. He had to give up teaching once he became Shaw’s, of course. Too much travelling. He mostly just writes the occasional review article these days. He also plays chess, and speaks four languages with a near-conversational fluency – including German and French, one of which is Erik’s native tongue and the other that might as well be. And he’s a telepath – a bloody telepath, and here Erik has not even bothered shielding his mind and all his dangerous desires since he last left Emma’s company. 

He can’t stop the thoughts. He must be as easy for Charles to read as a picture-book, with rather lurid illustrations. The two of them find themselves talking late into every night, and Charles has so many _ideas_ for the future of Genosha, and is so cleverly critical yet gently supportive of Erik’s own dreams and ambitions. Charles has been sitting at Shaw’s right hand for years and he knows everything, he sees everything, and he _understands all of it_. How can Shaw leave him out here to recuperate? Charles would be such a valuable advisor, could even be a silent prompt at the back of Erik’s mind – Shaw’s mind, rather. Because he’s Shaw’s omega. Not Erik’s. Shaw’s.

The fact of this is so wrenching that Erik thinks he will be pulled apart when he leaves.

After just under a week, Erik gets a call from one of Shaw’s secretaries; a car will be picking him up tomorrow morning. 

“Our last night together,” Charles says, quietly, pouring them each a glass of wine as they both sit on bar stools beside the granite kitchen bench. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Erik clinks the crystal together. He puts his lips to the edge. He stares into the red depths of the liquor, breathing it in, unable to make his throat open for it. He puts it down on the bench. 

“Charles-”

Charles shakes his head, swallowing his first sip and clicking his tongue. “We can’t.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to-”

“I do.”

Erik finds he is pressing his palm flat to the smooth, black bench top. He might have forgotten how to breathe. There’s a pain in his chest like he’s at the bottom of the ocean. “So you,” he clears his throat. “You feel the same.”

Charles’ eyes flick up to meet his. He gives the tiniest nod.

Erik lunges across the space between them and grabs Charles’ wrist, the injured one without meaning to, but Charles slides effortlessly out of his grasp and rubs the bandage with a grimace, “I can’t,” he says, not looking at Erik now, “I’m Shaw’s. That will not change for anything.”

“We’re meant to be together!” Erik growls, still bent awkwardly forward.

“Erik,” Charles looks at him at last. “Don’t do this. You’re an alpha and I am an omega and if you demand everything of me, I’ll have to give in to you, and that will make you just like Sebastian,” he enunciates the last three words as if highlighting each one in a memo. “Don’t ever put me in that position. But especially not on our last night.”

Erik gives a huff of laughter, but nothing is even the slightest bit funny. “So that’s it?”

But he looks at Charles, in his cast from trying to save a man who didn’t need saving, with his academic’s too-long hair and his freckles from reading in the sun without a hat, and they both know that that’s it.

\---

Erik returns to the capital. He outlines reports and makes phone calls and smiles for the cameras and goes to the charity parties with Emma on his arm. He does not look for Charles in the crowd. He does not ask Shaw if his omega is out of the cast yet. He even does his best to go along with all the nice omegas that Emma shoves under his nose, the honey-voiced girls and smirking boys, all fine specimens, all appropriate matches for a rising politician. None of them Charles. 

The next winter, his professional luck has not waned. He’s got a face for television and an adversity to scandal that various mentors and bigwigs like the look of. Sure, a lot of them shrug, he’s a bit mouthy and his abilities aren’t exactly social, but people like their politicians to have more physical powers. Telekenesis or flight or the ability to shoot rainbows out of their ass, whatever. People trust a mutant with that kind of ability. They don’t trust telepaths and illusionists and fortunetellers. 

Erik starts to get invites to more private parties. Well, invite isn’t the right word – the dates and times and dress codes tend to just appear on his schedules, usually with a frown from his secretary as if she can’t remember why she put it there. He even sees the inside of Shaw’s grand city apartment on occasion.

He does not keep his eye out for Charles. He does not. He does not.

\---

It is a Saturday, and Shaw is throwing a party. An old federal bill that had given employers in the rest of the country the right to refuse mutant employment has been amended. The Genoshan newspapers are worshipping the very dust Shaw steps in. Every bar in the capital is full. Emma has a dozen invites, but she tells Erik he must go to only one: Shaw’s private party at his two-level inner city apartment. 

Erik is loitering by the drinks table now. He has an article to draft and a pile of forms to look over before Monday morning, and frankly, he’d rather be at home hunched in front of his desk than swapping school stories with these fatcats. He hasn’t even seen Shaw all evening – Erik arrived late, after Emma had moved on to another ball and it was clear the booze had been flowing freely for some time. Shaw is probably already in an upstairs room somewhere with the cream of the crop.

But no, Erik hears someone call, “Sebastian! Oh, do join us!” and turns his head to see Shaw descending the gilded staircase with Riptide and Mr Azazel at his elbow, and…

Erik feels as if his suit is suddenly too small by several sizes. Shaw twitches the bronze chain in his hand, and Charles stumbles a step, catching himself on the rail. He is dressed in an overtight, deep purple dress shirt and even from this distance Erik can see that his expression is as blank as he can consciously make it. Riptide steps around him as if he was a potted plant. 

Shaw reaches the bottom of the stairs and goes about greeting latecomers with open arms and friendly taunts. He jerks the chain again whenever Charles gets too far behind, but at one point – Erik has to put down his glass for fear it will shatter in his grip – turns and kicks him on the ankle when he gets too close. 

_Don’t come this way,_ Erik thinks, half hoping Charles will hear it and redirect Shaw somehow. _I won’t be able to stop myself. Don’t._

Shaw spots him across the room and his face breaks into a broad grin. “Erik!” he throws up his hands and the guests part in front of him as he strides across the tiles. “So glad you could make it,” he shakes Erik’s hand and kisses his cheek. His skin is very cool. This is usually a sign that he is building up a lot of energy, Erik has learned from the grapevine. He is introduced to Mr Azazel and Riptide, though he’s met them plenty of times.

And then Shaw reaches back and says, “And of course, you know Charles,” as he slides one hand around the back of Charles’ neck and propels him to the fore. Shaw leans in close to whisper into Charles’ ear, loud enough for Erik to hear but no one else. “Did you miss him, my dove?”

Charles does not answer. His features are unreadable. He almost looks like he might be on sedatives, except for his eyes. His eyes are very focused, looking only at a point somewhere around Erik’s right ear.

Shaw allows Charles this blankness for now, turning back to Erik and transferring his drink to the same hand that holds the chain so he can stand sideways to Charles, one hand splayed against Charles’ chest. In the V of Charles’ collar, Erik can see the faintest trace of scratches from sharp fingernails. “Enjoy your night, Erik. If there’s anything you want, don’t hesitate to ask,” Shaw’s voices raises toward the end. He knows what Erik wants. He doesn’t even care. It’s just a great laugh to him, the idea of people coveting what he has, because who the hell is going to take anything from him?

Erik hates him hates him hateshimhateshim _hateshimhateshim_. 

Shaw leads Charles and his retinue away into the crowd, goes to talk to some Australian politician and her omega, both of whom are pointedly avoiding looking at Charles. Erik watches for a moment, as Shaw laughs easily at something the alpha woman says. His free hand is now on Charles’ buttock, squeezing absent-mindedly. 

Erik puts his drink down on the next silver tray that floats past in a waiter’s hand. He heads for the front hall of the expansive apartment. There is a young couple kissing in there – a young alpha chick he recognises as Shaw’s publicist, and an older omega woman with short, white hair – but the look on Erik’s face is so brutal that they make themselves scarce pretty quickly. Erik snatches his coat off the hook and is slipping it onto his shoulders when there is a soft crack behind him and the smell of brimstone. He turns to look at Azazel.

“Mr Shaw would like you upstairs,” Azazel says.

“I’m tired,” Erik folds his scarf along the length and begins to wrap it around his throat. “Tell him to book an appointment with my secretary.”

Azazel flickers and is suddenly very close, and that stinking sulphurous fume makes a cough bubble between Erik’s lips. “Mr Shaw is a busy man. He insisted that if you tried to leave so soon, you should come see him upstairs.”

Erik puts his hands in his trouser pockets. There are coins in there, and paperclips in the breast of his suit and a pair of nail clippers in his coat. He goes nowhere without metal. There are anti-mutant extremists to worry about, among other things. “Did he even tell you what this is about?” he snarled. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s bullshit, Azazel. As long as he doesn’t do it in front of the cameras, fine, I’ll look the other way, but do you really want to help him make an ass of himself in front of all these A-listers?”

“I’m not going to ask you again,” Azazel says, holding out his hand. Erik stares into his face for several long seconds, wondering if there is really anything Azazel can do if he jams a straightened paperclip through the flesh of his palm and walks out of here. 

But leave Charles? With that fucking collar and Shaw’s wrath?

He slides his hand into Azazel’s.

\---

He is deposited upstairs in a small, luxuriously decorated lounge, the sort of place they would have called a smoking room back when pipes were still the height of sophistication. Azazel tells him to wait, and he waits. For more than two hours. At one point he thinks, _fuck this_ , and goes to leave only to find the door locked. He rattles the handle stupidly for a minute, then places his hand over the lock to twirl the tumblers or maybe just melt it to high heaven, but feels at once that something is wrong. He figures out at last that the door must be bolted on the far side with wood.

He sits back on one of the recliners and combs his fingers through his hair. He does not understand where this is going and why and what Shaw hopes to achieve. Erik is popular, Erik is a press favourite, Erik is the sort of ‘new blood’ that Genosha needs right now, right when it’s trying to convince the rest of the world that mutants can govern their own state without blowing themselves up. 

He has heard rumours that Shaw has had dissenters killed, in the early days of the state, but he wouldn’t… the man can’t just go around killing people, can he? On top of everything else, he’s always spouting on about how mutants must never harm mutants. It’s like his fucking mantra.

He can hear the party wrapping up downstairs. He’s glad he didn’t have more to drink, or he’d be busting for the bathroom right now. When he hears footsteps on the landing – several pairs, a few sounding very tipsy – he forgets about all such trivialities. 

The door opens and Shaw and the last of the party pour through, all smiles and the smell of wine. Two older lobbyists are bawling laughter at something Shaw has said. He is still dragging the chained Charles in his wake, but no one looks twice at Charles.

Shaw gives no surprise at seeing Erik in his smoking room, but acts as if he were just another one of the boys. Glasses of port are handed around. Someone lights up a cigar from a case in their pocket, then puts it out quickly when Shaw complains. Charles stands by Shaw’s chair throughout, his arms folded behind his back. The deep, maroon-purple shirt isn’t his colour at all, but it looks provocative and dressy in a way that makes Erik’s balls tighten. He grits his teeth and thinks about law recommendation reports. Inside jokes that mean nothing to him are being tossed back and forth between the revellers, “So he goes… and she just… but you know he’s always the one to pin the tail on the donkey! Ha, ha, ha!”

 _You’re so fucking funny_ , Erik thinks, curling his fingers around the glass he’s been given and trying not to imagine the steel-plated painting frame above Shaw’s head wrapping tighter and tighter around the bastard’s neck. 

Finally there’s a lull in the hilarity. Shaw reaches around Charles and slaps Charles’ ass. “Get in there, give us a show,” he says, and Charles stumbles into the centre of the room. The chain rattles slack behind him, terminating in the grip of Shaw’s drinking hand. As he takes a sip, Shaw adds, “you can hear my thoughts, you know what I want.”

For the barest fraction of a second, Charles looks at Erik, and for the first time since this sick night began Erik sees a flash of emotion there. He wills himself not to react to it, but in his head he cries, _let me help tell me what Shaw wants tell me what to do!_

There is no answer from Charles’ mind. He raises his hands and begins to undo the buttons of his shirt, one at a time. As he exposes more skin, the smell of omega coming down off their heat tinges the air, like a faint purple haze. The revellers are in a hush now, both alphas and the few omegas who have accompanied them up from the party. Charles peels off the dress shirt – expensive cloth, Erik thinks, trying to focus on identifying the brand and the weave and style of the cut rather than the curve of Charles’ shoulders and the flex of his spine as he moves. 

Charles discards the shirt and stands still for a moment, his eyes locked on Shaw’s face. Shaw takes a slow sip of his port. He points across the room, a vague flick of his wrist, and it takes Erik a moment to realise he’s not gesturing at _him_ but at one of the cronies, who leans back and flicks a switch on the extensive sound system installed in the wall cabinet. It tells Erik everything about how consenting the revellers are in this and how many times it must have happened before.

The music that thrums from the sound system is some pumping, techno-house track, something with a fast bass and snippets of a Japanese girl band singing the same sort of garish shit any American pop girl would be singing if this were her remix. Charles raises his arms and begins to dance.

It is rhythmic and erotic, all gyrating hips and the pulse and twist of his body with every beat. It is hypnotic, everyone in the room is in thrall now, and Erik looks at Charles’ face-

-at last, the expression has come back into Charles’ face, and God, fuck, this isn’t right. He’s goddamn getting hard at the sight of Charles’ body moving, he can feel it, but Charles’ face is a thousand times more expressive. He has a doctorate degree and writes review articles for top medical journals, he has a mind like a shard of glass and he has dreams for Genosha, for the grand future of mutantkind. And Shaw is drinking in the sight of him like he’s a five-buck wine that he wants to get through as fast as possible, get drunk on Charles’ sex as fast as possible, get this party pumping as fast as he can. 

Erik thinks he’s going to be sick. He really is. He actually looks around for a wastepaper bin or something, his empty stomach heaving, but then Charles voice washes through his mind. 

_Control yourself, Erik, he’ll only make things worse for you._

Hearing that voice, for the first time since they parted in the drive of the lake house, feels like every part of Erik is slotting into place. He forces the bile down and sits back in the recliner. He tries to form intelligible sentences in his mind, but all he can manage are flashes of fury, hate for Shaw, peaks of lust at the trail of dark hair on Charles’ chest. 

_I know,_ Charles replies. _I know you’d kill him for me. I know you’d do anything for me. But knowing is enough. Control yourself._

He can’t, he _can’t_ , but somehow he does. And then he catches Shaw looking at him and for just a moment his façade breaks. His face twitches, something slips through, and Shaw stands up suddenly and hurls his drink at Charles.

Charles ducks and someone shrieks as the glass shatters on the far wall. The music continues to pound, but Charles isn’t dancing anymore. Shaw reaches him in two steps and grabs his neck in one hand and his wrist with the other, bending his omega back and down until Charles is in a half-crouch. Charles’ lips are pulled back from his teeth, his eyes sharp slits of anger, but Shaw’s face is cold and merciless. And still the music pounds on, can’t someone fucking turn that shit off?

“Sebastian, let me go,” Charles says, faint above the beat. And then, perhaps reading an answer from Shaw’s mind, “No one is disobeying you, love, you’re fucking paranoid!”

Shaw says something through gritted teeth, too low for Erik to catch, and Charles replies, “Not in front of the guests. You conceited c--”

Shaw lets go of his neck and hits him, and Charles crumples. Finally, fucking finally, someone turns off the damn music and there is the terrible silence of a room full of people trying to look the other way without moving their eyes. Erik shoots to his feet and Shaw raises his head like a bull that has just trampled the red flag and now spotted the matador. 

“Well, go on,” Shaw says quietly. “Do it, Erik. I’m sick of you striding around like you’re perfect, you damn arrogant boy, thinking you’re above the rest of us. But Emma Frost saw through your damn propriety, she told me you can’t stop thinking with your damn dick, can’t stop thinking about _my omega_. So show us,” he waves his hand around the room of silent guests. “Show us how base you really are,” he bends and grabs Charles by the shoulders, hauls him up and sets him on his feet. Charles isn’t bleeding. He doesn’t even touch the faint pink mark where Shaw hit him, but he is breathing heavily and there is a hard, braced look in his eye. Shaw shoves him and he stumbles across the few steps between them.

Erik catches him. His skin is boiling and his limbs feel loose and thin in Erik’s arms. There’s dampness on his skin and a shiver in his muscles and the smell of him, the cloying smell of pheromones and sex, but Erik forces his own arousal down with the thought of Charles reading a quote from _Madame Bovary_ in the evenings at the lakehouse. 

“Fuck him,” Shaw barks. “You bastard, fuck him right here, or all of they will,” he spreads his arms. “Every single one, they’ll do just what I tell them. Or you will.”

Erik feels like he’s trying to breathe magma instead of air. The steel picture frame behind Shaw trembles, but he knows Shaw will knock it away like it was straw. The room is swirling around him and he can’t even feel his body from the chest down, only the small, fragile shape of Charles in his arms. And he thinks, _what choice do I have, I’ll have to…_

“Stop!” Charles shouts, putting two fingers to his temple.

Shaw stops. Everyone stops. Every face in the room frozen in an expression of horror and, in a few cases that make Erik flinch, amusement or lust. Charles steps out of his arms and turns to look at him, his fingers still on his temple. His voice is strained as holds out his free hand and speaks into the silence. He reaches up and unclips the collar, throwing it down. It wasn’t even locked. “We’re leaving, Erik. Bring my shirt.”

Erik gapes at him, but his brain has stopped processing any kind of higher concept functions. He sweeps up the crumpled shirt and takes Charles’ hand. It is long-fingered and very strong in his, and drags him out into the hall. Charles does not look at him as he pulls him down the stairs, through the tiled lounge with the abandoned glasses and forgotten shawls and shoes from the party. He does not take his fingers away from his temple until they are in the elevator, and he still does not meet Erik’s eyes, but snatches the shirt from Erik’s hands and pulls it on, doing up the buttons as fast as he can. 

“You could do that,” Erik stammers, “all along?”

“No,” Charles snaps, checking his collar in the reflection off the steel wall. “He was my alpha and I loved him. I wouldn’t.”

Erik pauses for a beat and then asks, “Was?”

“You’ve claimed me now, with your damn assent to his proposition,” Charles grinds out, shooting his cuffs and doing them up. The shirt, though tight, looks less provocative now and more like a last-minute choice for a coffee date. “I don’t think he realised that was all it took, but it’s done. Now it’s complicated.”

Oh, God. Charles heard his thought, that scrap of though, that acceptance that he would have to – to force Charles to keep them both safe – and that broke the bond. Shaw had unwittingly _offered_ Charles to Erik, and Erik had accepted, and that had cinched it. 

The elevator whirrs as they speed downwards. Erik takes Charles’ shoulder and turns him until they’re face to face. The scent of him is intoxicating. He leans in to kiss him, but Charles pulls away like he’s dodging a blow.

“Not like this,” he shakes his head, blue eyes locked on Erik’s face. “Not yet.”

The elevator dings as it reaches the ground floor, and Charles slips out between the doors. He walks away without glancing back, leaving Erik standing in the steel box for so long the doors automatically close again with a gentle click.

\---

Someone leaks it to the press. Of course they do. But the scandal falls heavily in Shaw’s half of the court; the papers scream of drunken orgies at his party, of Shaw trying to force “another guest” into a compromising position, of Shaw “throwing his omega out” and of anonymous quotes from people who witnessed “a disgusting temper-tantrum” on his part. Erik is only mentioned in the _Genosha Telegraph_ , and only as a guest who “sensibly left early on”. It’s not clear whether anyone has even told the media he was present during Shaw’s temper-tantrum, let alone the cause of it.

Erik doesn’t give a shit about the media. He is Charles’ alpha now, he can feel it, like a thin blue thread tickling across his skin, one he fumbles for but cannot grasp. He tracks Charles to Emma’s flat, of all places. He didn’t even know they were friends, but he supposes that Emma is a regular feature at Shaw’s home. The doorman doesn’t let him in at first, but rings Ms Frost and is given permission to show him up.

Emma leans against the doorway in a white bathrobe and perfect makeup, arm stretched across the width of the frame. “You’re not welcome here, babydoll.”

“I want to see my omega,” Erik says.

“Sorry, Erik. Telepaths gotta stick together.”

Charles appears at the far side of the room, above Emma’s arm. He is in fresh clothes, a plain grey T-shirt and jeans. He glances at Emma and there is a silent exchange between them, and then Emma drops her arm with a sigh and lets Erik through. 

“Come out onto the balcony,” Charles says quietly.

In the cool breeze he leans on the railing and turns back to Erik, who steps in and tries to kiss him again. The heat is well gone now. He smells clean and homely, like something from deep in the forgotten days of childhood. Charles lets their lips meet, only a little, but doesn’t open his mouth to him. They stand with foreheads pressed together for a while. Erik can feel Charles’ breath on his chin. He wants him, he needs him, he’s so desperate it’s all he can do not to grab his head right now and-

“Erik,” Charles says, and his eyes are squeezed shut as he pulls away. “Control yourself.”

“But you want this too, I know you do,” Erik raises his hand to brush a trail of Charles’ hair back behind the curve of his ear. 

“For the sake of your career, we can’t,” Charles says.

“My career--!” 

“We are so much more than our base desires,” Charles touches him at last, both his hands cupping Erik’s face. Erik knows it is no coincidence he used that particular word, the same as Shaw’s accusation. “We are so much more than these urges and these sexual norms. We can be so much more,” he is gazing into Erik’s eyes now. “Give it time. Give yourself time, give me time. We’ll come back to it when the world isn’t watching. I promise you.”

Erik presses his hand over one of Charles’, holding it to his cheek, wanting to kiss him and pick him up and carry him away. But then what would that make him? Base? Shaw? 

He leaves alone, with only Emma watching him go.

\---

It is winter and snowing the day Genosha voters turn out in record numbers. Erik wins in what the papers declare a landslide, all except the ever-dignified Genosha Telegraph, which calls it a "convincing majority". Erik has not slept through two days of last-minute rallies and endless speeches. He tosses back cough medicine every hour to try and keep his voice from cutting out and is not allowed to go to the urinal without a bodyguard. There is a Genosha joke going around that the populace are rather hoping some anti-mutant nutter will make an attempt on Lehnsherr's life, just to see the absolute failure of any bullet or knife or bomb. Nevertheless, the voting day goes smoothly and Erik steps up in front of the cameras to declare victory and humbly accept the responsibility of being Genosha's first president as an independent nation.

After shaking more hands in more shapes, sizes and colours than he knew even mutants had, his people make excuses for him and he is finally allowed to retire "to celebrate with close friends". If it were anyone else, there would be "family" tacked on the end of there, but Erik is the only candidate on the ballot that didn't have an omega or children. Some of his opponents threw slurs about how untrustworthy that made him, an alpha who couldn't find an omega, but plenty of his supporters spread the story about how he worked too hard and was too occupied with his duty to maintain an active social life.

All he wants now is a shower and to sleep until the next election, but his hotel room is still full of aides and his PR crew. There are last minutes changes to tomorrow's media schedule and a handful of genuine friends - Erik has few, he admits - have been let in to congratulate him now that he's taken off his tie and shoes. Somehow, though he doesn't remember putting her on the guest list, Emma Frost wriggles her way through security and appears at his side. He kisses her and her smile makes wrinkles in her powdered cheeks. She still does not have an alpha, though she is still considered by some to be the most eligible omega in the capital. Erik suspects, in the deep consciousness that he hopes she can't read, that the only alpha who she ever really desired was the long-deposed Shaw, now missing somewhere in South America. He tries not to think such things in her presence.

"I brought someone else," Emma pouts, "but the goons downstairs wouldn't let him through."

She projects an image, no more than a camera-flash's length, into his mind. His muscles freeze, and then he dashes to the balcony, shoves the sliding door open and leans over the balcony.

Far below, Erik sees a dark figure wading away through the snow. But he must have sensed Erik's mind, because his face soon turns up to look at him.

"Wait there!" Erik yells. "Wait there, I'm coming down!"

The falling snow blankets his voice, but the man below doesn't walk away.

Erik makes apologies and excuses and manages to slip through his entourage and elude his bodyguards by shutting the lift doors in their face. He bolts through the lobby of the hotel, thankfully almost empty, not realising until he hits the snowy pavement that he is wearing only his socks.

Charles stands in the snow lit only by the capital's ambient glow reflected off the heavy clouds. He is in a thick navy coat and a scarf tucked up to his chin, his hands in his pockets. When Erik runs to him, he smiles, and he looks exactly as he did six years ago on another balcony, in another place.

"Congratulations, Mr President," he says quietly, then chuckles. "Am I allowed to call you that before your inauguration?"

"It's not what I want you to call me," Erik replies, stopping just in front of him. Snow is gathering on Charles' shoulders and in his hair, which is cut shorter than it used to be. Erik can feel a blue thread tugging him, deep in his chest. "Just tell me why you're here, please don't drag it out," he says, tucking his hands under his arms. His fingers are already numb. "Is it time? Are you ready-”

"Are you?" Charles cuts him off. 

Erik nods. He wants to say, I always have been, but it is only now that he realises that wasn't true. 

"You're cold," Charles says, closing the distance between them and opening his coat, wrapping the wings around Erik's torso. Erik presses his face into his hair, his arms trapped between his own body and Charles' warmth, and breathes in the scent of him. Home. 

"Let's go in," Charles whispers. "Together."


End file.
